The great advances of civilization ... have never come from centralized government

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Columbus did not set out to seek a new route to China in response to a majority directive of a parliament, though he was partly financed by an absolute monarch. Newton and Leibnitz; Einstein and Bohr; Shakespeare, Milton, and Pasternak; Whitney, McCormick, Edison, and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, and Albert Schweitzer; no one of these opened new frontiers in human knowledge and understanding, in literature, in technical possibilities, or in the relief of human misery in response to governmental directives. Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity.

M. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), loc. 403

In my view, this analysis of history, though exhilaratingly written, is nonsense, and in some cases factually wrong. This is not because free markets aren't good, they're just not the only way good things happen.

Of the many remarkable things about Hamlet perhaps the most extraordinary is its length

Of the many remarkable things about Hamlet perhaps the most extraordinary is its length. At roughly 4,000 lines, the Second Quarto – the closest thing we have to what Shakespeare wrote in late 1599 – could not have been performed uncut at the Globe. Nor could his revised version of the play, a couple of hundred lines shorter, which eventually appeared in the First Folio. Though the Elizabethan stage dispensed with time-consuming intermissions and changes in scenery, these versions of Hamlet would still have taken four hours to perform; even at top speed, actors couldn’t rattle off much more than a thousand lines of verse in an hour. With outdoor performances at the Globe beginning at two in the afternoon and the sun setting in late winter and early autumn around five o’clock, an uncut Hamlet staged in February or October would have left the actors stumbling about in the fading light by the Gravedigger scene; the fencing match, fought in the dark, could have been lethal.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 339

He introduced around 600 words in Hamlet that he had never used before, two-thirds of which he would never use again

The roughly 4,000 lines in the play [Hamlet] ended up requiring nearly the same number of different words (for comparison’s sake, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and The Jew of Malta each use only about half that number). Even the 14,000 or so different words or compounds that Shakespeare had already employed in his plays (by the end of his career that figure would reach about 18,000) proved insufficient. According to Alfred Hart, who painstakingly counted when and how Shakespeare introduced each word into his work, he introduced around 600 words in Hamlet that he had never used before, two-thirds of which he would never use again. This is an extraordinary number (King Lear, with 350, is the only one that comes close; in the spare Julius Caesar only seventy words appear that Shakespeare had not previously used).

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 320

The same ingredients, viewed from the perspective of musical comedy, make perfect sense

Shakespeare chose to write more songs – five in all, three sung by adults, two by boys – than he would in any other play. Thinking of As You Like It as an embryonic musical may help explain why critics have had such a hard time with its meagre, episodic plot, its rich vein of contemporary satire, its over-the-top climax where the god Hymen enters, and all its song and dance. The same ingredients, viewed from the perspective of musical comedy, make perfect sense.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 251

Those familiar with his sources expected Cordelia to live

When Shakespeare had King Lear enter with Cordelia dead in his arms, he caught his audience by surprise, all the more so because those familiar with his sources expected Cordelia to live.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 238

Issues Elizabethans confronted in their world and in the theatre – assassination, succession, tyrannicide, holidays – were not only steeped in but produced by religious division.

Since the end of the seventeenth century critics and editors of Julius Caesar have focused almost exclusively on the play’s unforgettable characters and gripping political drama. From their perspective, the religious bits that surface throughout the play were ‘palpable blunders’ and for a long time they did their best to ignore or repair them. When, in 1693, Thomas Rymer condemned the play’s anachronisms as ‘a sacrilege’, his language ironically registers the extent to which a fixed notion of what Shakespeare’s Roman play ought to be – classical, political and pagan – had displaced the mix of religion and politics that Shakespeare’s audience would have taken for granted. Issues Elizabethans confronted in their world and in the theatre – assassination, succession, tyrannicide, holidays – were not only steeped in but produced by religious division. Part of Shakespeare’s genius was discovering in Plutarch’s old story the fault lines of his own milieu.
...

Moral qualms aside, the real problem with political assassination for Elizabethans – and Shakespeare’s play makes this abundantly clear – was that it unleashed forces that could not be predicted or controlled. Assassination was linked with chaos, blood-letting and potential civil war because this was what it invariably led to. However noble Brutus’ motives, however morally and politically justified his actions, it would have been clear to many in Shakespeare’s audience that he hadn’t thought things through. Critics who fault Julius Caesar for being a broken-backed play, who are disappointed by the final two acts and who feel that the assassination takes place too early in the action, fail to understand that the two parts of the play – the events leading up to the assassination and the bloody civil strife that follow – go hand in hand.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 156 and 163

This whole section on how deeply Julius Caesar is informed by the French Wars of Religion was fascinating.

Bizarrely, modern-day editors, who ought to know better, have followed suit

This unusual epilogue survives by accident – or rather, due to carelessness. The Second Part of Henry the Fourth was published less than two years after this. When the manuscript was passed along to the printing house, both versions of the epilogue were bundled with it. The compositor setting type, unsure of what to do, printed both but left an extra bit of space between the Whitehall and Curtain versions. Had he thought about it more, he might have realized that it made no sense for the speaker to kneel to the Queen midway through the epilogue and then spring up again. When the compositor of the 1623 Folio came upon this crux he too decided not to choose between the two but also melded them into a single epilogue, though he at least tried to mend things by moving the prayer to the Queen to the end of the epilogue. Bizarrely, modern-day editors, who ought to know better, have followed suit, leaving the confusion intact and obscuring why and how Shakespeare redirects his art at this time.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 41

Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists were writing for the most experienced playgoers in history

In 1600, in an England of four million, London and its immediate environs held a population of roughly two hundred thousand. If, on any given day, two plays were staged in playhouses that held as many as two to three thousand spectators each, it’s likely that with theatres even half-full, as many as three thousand or so Londoners were attending a play. Over the course of a week – conservatively assuming five days of performances each week – fifteen thousand Londoners paid to see a play. Obviously, some never went at all, or rarely, while others – including young and generally well-to-do law students at the Inns of Court – made up for that, seeing dozens of plays a year; but on average, it’s likely that over a third of London’s adult population saw a play every month. Which meant that Shakespeare and his fellow dramatists were writing for the most experienced playgoers in history.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), 9-10

How in the course of little over a year he went from writing The Merry Wives of Windsor to writing a play as inspired as Hamlet

This work, then, grew out of frustration with how much I didn’t know and frustration with scholars of all critical denominations who never quite got around to addressing the question I found most pressing: how, at age thirty-five, Shakespeare went from being an exceptionally talented writer to being one of the greatest who ever lived – put another way: how in the course of little over a year he went from writing The Merry Wives of Windsor to writing a play as inspired as Hamlet.

J. Shapiro, 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), loc. 152

Every town has its Rawlinson report, its grim accounts of filthy streets and wretched, overcrowded hovels. Why dwell on such details? In Britain most of us doing family history will find that our ancestors were poor by our standards; their lives were harder, shorter; they lived in accommodation we could hardly stomach, on streets whose stench would make us gag; their diseases were more terrible and unchecked; their morality wayward and improvised; their accidents crippling. They coped; they put up with it; they died of it. From the perspective of much of the documentation of the period, my ancestors were merely part of what one local historian of Portsmouth calls ‘the perennial inescapable problem of poverty’. But much of it was escapable. Why go back to the past only to feel washed by an amorphous pity? Anger is more bracing. Nor is this merely a matter

Ec Why dwell on such details? In Britain most of us doing family history will find that our ancestors were poor by our standards; their lives were harder, shorter; they lived in accommodation we could hardly stomach, on streets whose stench would make us gag; their diseases were more terrible and unchecked; their morality wayward and improvised; their accidents crippling. They coped; they put up with it; they died of it. From the perspective of much of the documentation of the period, my ancestors were merely part of what one local historian of Portsmouth calls ‘the perennial inescapable problem of poverty’. But much of it was escapable. Why go back to the past only to feel washed by an amorphous pity? Anger is more bracing. 

A. Light, Common People: The History of An English Family (2014), loc. 3,479

People want to know where they came from but they also want to know where they could have gone

Family history constantly goes back to the future, mapping the distances that grow between the branches, asking why some flourish and others wither – historical questions which are always more than a matter of individual character. People want to know where they came from but they also want to know where they could have gone and why their branch of the family did not go there.

A. Light, Common People: The History of An English Family (2014), loc. 1,680

Our lack of trust in politicians is problematic, but it’s a long-term condition rather than a sudden, acute crisis.

Our lack of trust in politicians is problematic, but it’s a long-term condition rather than a sudden, acute crisis. For example, less than one in five people in Britain trust our politicians to tell the truth – but this is the same as when the survey started four decades ago. 

...

Britain is far from alone in its political leaders being trusted by only small minorities of the population. The overall pattern and level of trust in politicians is similar across a collection of around 20 countries in Europe, with consistently low levels over the last 16 years and not much difference between generations. The truth is that we’ve been disappointed in our politicians for a long time. 

...

Even in August 1944, with the Second World War reaching a climax, when a polling company asked, ‘Do you think that British politicians are out merely for themselves, for their party or to do their best for their country?’, only 36 per cent of respondents chose the last option. 

B. Duffy, The Generation Divide (2023), loc. 3,336

College-educated women ... have a 78 per cent chance of their first marriage lasting at least 20 years, while women with a high-school education have only about half that chance

In our more individualized times, where we are less connected to extended families, affluent nuclear families can buy support that helps keep families together, from childcare to couples counselling. Less well-off families are on their own, and the impact is startling: in the US, college-educated women aged between 22 and 44 have a 78 per cent chance of their first marriage lasting at least 20 years, while women with a high-school education have only about half that chance.

...

But in the end, stability matters, and it tends to be greater in married households, despite claims that long-term cohabitation is equivalent. Children in France, for example, are 66 per cent more likely to see their parents break up if they are cohabiting rather than married.

B. Duffy, The Generation Divide (2023), loc. 2,517 & 2,528

I know I shouldn’t be impressed, but I can’t help thinking that’s a great effort for a cohort in which the youngest is now 75 years old

Our relationship with alcohol is also highly related to when we were born. In fact, regular drinking is one of the clearest examples of a cohort effect we’ll see in this book. Figure 5.2 tracks the proportions of cohorts in England who have said they drink alcohol on five or more days a week over the last 20 years. The lines are incredibly flat, with a strict generational hierarchy and extremely consistent gaps between each. Around three in ten of the Pre-War generation drink alcohol five or more days a week; as far as we can tell, they always have and always will. I know I shouldn’t be impressed, but I can’t help thinking that’s a great effort for a cohort in which the youngest is now 75 years old.

B. Duffy, The Generation Divide (2023), loc. 2,049

the main outcome of taxation and welfare is lifetime redistribution

Contrary to common misconceptions, the main outcome of taxation and welfare is lifetime redistribution – the transfer of money between different periods in someone’s life – rather than the redistribution of money between different income groups.

B. Duffy, The Generation Divide (2023), loc. 828

We’ve got very used to this division very quickly, when it’s completely unnatural for humans

The same new survey we conducted in 2022 also tested whether we’d noticed this separation – and we have: two-thirds of us correctly say young people are more likely to live in cities and older people outside them. But over half of us say that’s always been the case, when this is actually a new trend that we’ve only seen in the last twenty or thirty years in the UK. We’ve got very used to this division very quickly, when it’s completely unnatural for humans.

B. Duffy, The Generation Divide (2023), loc. 175

The addition of a family of four to the typical urban area necessitates an additional ten thousand square feet of parking space

Since each major urban center served but a single function, parking lots began to multiple rapidly. Culture center parking serves only its patrons and is not used most of the time. Mall lots are all but vacant after nine in the evening. Arena lots, school lots, medical center lots, etc., enjoy no shared use but must be there. We have arrived at that point where the addition of a family of four to the typical urban area necessitates an additional ten thousand square feet of parking space to accommodate members’ vehicles at home and in the variety of separated centers at which they will have to park them. And now, we must use up a lot of land to secure houses and lots away from the congestion of auto traffic. Nothing was harder hit by unifunctional planning

R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987), 216

Community social life is necessary to healthy religious life

It wasn’t that the American farmer lacked the social instinct or had any less of it than anyone else. It was that the conditions of rural life and, often, that of local clergymen, operated against its realization in the social habits of the people. In Clermont, Ohio, for example, a survey conducted in 1914 showed the clergy’s stand on the following social activities: Sunday baseball (100 percent against), movies (65 percent against), dancing (90 percent against), playing cards (97 percent against), pool halls (85 percent against), and the annual circuses (48 percent against). Only tennis, croquet, and agricultural fairs received general approval.

....

The authors of that report concluded with some irony that the churches were strongest where the lodges were strongest and that “both are expressions of the same spirit of fraternity and sociability.” Two clear conclusions were drawn: “(1) Community social life is necessary to healthy religious life, and (2) If the church is going to succeed it must recognize the social needs of the community and assume its share of the leadership in social activities.” Perhaps the strongest indictment that can be made against the Puritanism and Protestantism of developing America is that, far too often, they sought to ensure the life of the church at the expense of the life of the community.

R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987), 73

The more people moved about, or were moved about by the companies that employed them, the more difficult it became to penetrate the nation’s residential areas

Once America became the high mobility society it now is, with about twenty percent of the population changing residence every year, one might have thought that neighborhoods would have been designed so that people could be integrated quickly and easily. What actually happened, however, was quite the opposite. The more people moved about, or were moved about by the companies that employed them, the more difficult it became to penetrate the nation’s residential areas.

R. Oldenburg, The great good place (1987), loc. 258

When you see the words “delicious” and “polenta” in close proximity, you know the phrases “plenty of cheese” or “lashings of butter” can’t be far away

‘When you see the words “delicious” and “polenta” in close proximity, you know the phrases “plenty of cheese” or “lashings of butter” can’t be far away.’ Niki Segnit, author of Lateral Cooking, nails the simultaneous appeal and bemused distaste for polenta in one neat phrase. At its best, polenta is indescribably comforting, rich and naturally sweet, soft and luscious. At its worst, it’s lumpy, bland, claggy and, quite frankly, hard work. As so often is the case (and I think we can agree, I am entirely unbiased in this whole pursuit), the difference is butter.

O. Potts, Butter (2022), loc. 2,561

It is less that I have buttered bread to accompany a bowl of soup, and more that my soup is the accompaniment to the buttered bread

And then there’s soup. It is less that I have buttered bread to accompany a bowl of soup, and more that my soup is the accompaniment to the buttered bread. The simpler the soup the better, but it must be thick, and smooth, and terribly hot. There is nothing sadder than a lukewarm soup. The bread should be hearty (read: not white, and doorstep in size), the butter thick and opaque, and dunked with enough confidence that the hot soup is just starting to melt that slab of butter before wham you’ve eaten the whole thing.

O. Potts, Butter (2022), loc. 713

This was very good advice but she still thought that living in a major city was key

If you want to move to the city, you can, Miss Grehan said. And studying poetry at university is a wonderful thing to do. But more important is to read poetry, and write poetry, every day. It doesn’t have to be for long. If just once a day people read a poem instead of picking up their phone, I guarantee you the world would be a better place. When she had gone Elaine said that this was very good advice but she still thought that living in a major city was key.

P. Murray, The bee sting (2023), Loc. 800

This is not a time to speak, she says, but a time to keep silent

Carole takes a long drink of tea then stares into space. I cannot tell you how many people have fallen silent since Jim has been arrested, it is as though I am guilty somehow, why are we being made to feel guilty when it is an evil that has been done to us? Eilish finds herself watching the clock, she stands up, shaking her head. This is not a time to speak, she says, but a time to keep silent, everybody has grown afraid, our husbands have been taken from us and placed into this silence, there are times at night when I hear this silence as loud as death but it is not death just arbitrary arrest and detention, you must keep telling this to yourself over and over.

P. Lynch, Prophet song (2023), Loc. 589

I have always found a good sherry sufficient for my needs, but I dare say these American beverages are not unpalatable

‘Ah, yes; cocktails. A drink imported, I am told, from America. The custom of drinking cocktails at all hours of the day is on the increase, undoubtedly, amongst certain sections of society. I have always found a good sherry sufficient for my needs, but I dare say these American beverages are not unpalatable.

N. Blake (C. Day-Lewis), Thou shell of death (1936), 5

What is the point of investing in a process of learning about the world if there is almost no time to put that information to use?

Once I knew this stage was coming, interacting with these animals, especially the friendly ones, became poignant. Their time was so short. This discovery also made the puzzle of their large brains even more acute. What is the point of building a large nervous system if your life is over in a year or two? The machinery of intelligence is expensive, both to build and to run. The usefulness of learning, which large brains make possible, seems dependent on lifespan. What is the point of investing in a process of learning about the world if there is almost no time to put that information to use?

P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds: the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life (2017), loc. 1,986

Shells were the mollusks’ response to what looks like an abrupt change in the lives of animals: the invention of predation. There are various ways of dealing with the fact that you are suddenly surrounded by creatures who can see and would like to eat you, but one way, a molluscan specialty, is to grow a hard shell and live within or beneath it.

P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds: the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life (2017), loc. 550

Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals

Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals. Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evolution built minds twice over. This is probably the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien.

P. Godfrey-Smith, Other minds: the octopus and the evolution of intelligent life (2017), loc. 127 

Drink Less, Drink Better

In the decade of the 1990s, total French consumption of wine dropped just 2 percent, but the decline in the lower-quality wines that are drunk daily was much more severe, falling 19 percent. The number of French people drinking wine daily or almost daily fell from 46.9 percent in 1980 to 23.5 percent in 2000. And people in their early sixties are four times more likely to drink wine daily than those in their early thirties. Some wine officials try to find solace in the fact that on average the French are drinking better wines. Boire Moins, Boire Mieux (Drink Less, Drink Better) has become the mantra of French optimists who hope that the business can make up in quality what it is losing in quantity. The higher-quality wines governed by the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée system accounted for only 14 percent of domestic sales in 1950 but are nearly 50 percent today.

G. M. Taber, Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine (2005), 281

Only to Spain and Portugal to check out the fortified wines

The world’s view of wine at that time can be seen in the itinerary of the seven-month tour Steven Spurrier made in 1965 on behalf of Christopher’s, his employer and London’s oldest wine merchant. Spurrier spent three months in Bordeaux, two months in Burgundy, one week in the Rhône Valley, three weeks in Germany, and one week each in Champagne, the Loire Valley, and Alsace. Then after a summer break, he went to watch the harvests in Jerez, Spain, for Sherry and Oporto, Portugal, for Port. Interestingly, he did not go to Italy at all, and only to Spain and Portugal to check out the fortified wines.

G. M. Taber, Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine (2005), 27

Tradition is an experiment that has worked

They determined over time, for example, that Cabernet Sauvignon grapes did best in Bordeaux and Pinot Noir grapes performed well in Burgundy, so no one had to waste time trying to grow Pinot Noir in Bordeaux or Cabernet Sauvignon in Burgundy. The lessons of history had already been learned. As Émile Peynaud, a University of Bordeaux professor and the leading French wine guru of the twentieth century, said, “Tradition is an experiment that has worked.”

G. M. Taber, Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine (2005), 18

Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper

His father wasn’t the monster he could have been with the power he held over his slaves. He wasn’t a monster at all. Just an ordinary man who sometimes did the monstrous things his society said were legal and proper. But I had seen no particular fairness in him. He did as he pleased. If you told him he wasn’t being fair, he would whip you for talking back.

O. Butler, Kindred (1979), 146

Trying either to forget who they are or to remember where they live

It was eight in the morning, a time when drinkers are trying either to forget who they are or to remember where they live.

T. Pratchett, Soul Music (1994), 252

The uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in a battle against crossbows and broadswords.

Susan did not know much about history. It always seemed a particularly dull subject. The same stupid things were done over and over again by tedious people. What was the point? One king was pretty much like another. The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they’d have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in a battle against crossbows and broadswords.

T. Pratchett, Soul Music (1994), 39

It means “lack of success”

‘It’s still miles to go,’ she said. ‘I mean to do it,’ said Granny. ‘There’s plenty of night left.’ ‘Not enough, I’m thinking.’ ‘A witch doesn’t know the meaning of the word “failure”, Gytha.’ They shot up into the clear air again. The horizon was a line of golden light as the slow dawn of the Disc sped across the land, bulldozing the suburbs of the night. ‘Esme?’ said Nanny Ogg, after a while. ‘What?’ ‘It means “lack of success”.’ They flew in chilly silence for several seconds.

T. Pratchett, Wyrd sisters (1988), loc. 2,813

I often think this is the role I would play on quests. It would not be a helpful one.

They just should not, in Susan’s very definite and precise opinion, be allowed to take up more than a page to say so

She listened with half an ear to what the rest of the class was doing. It was a poem about daffodils. Apparently the poet had liked them very much. Susan was quite stoical about this. It was a free country. People could like daffodils if they wanted to. They just should not, in Susan’s very definite and precise opinion, be allowed to take up more than a page to say so.

Terry Pratchett, Soul Music (1994), 15

Oxford is the one place in Europe where a man may do anything, however eccentric, and arouse no interest or emotion at all

Oxford is the one place in Europe where a man may do anything, however eccentric, and arouse no interest or emotion at all. In what other city, Cadogan asked himself, remembering his undergraduate days, could one address to a policeman a discourse on epistemology in the witching hours of the night, and be received with neither indignation nor suspicion?

E. Crispin, The Moving Toyshop (1946), 9

Unalienated heirs of bronze-sworded chariot lords from beyond the Ister

Father and son exchanged looks, in a moment of perfect harmony; unalienated heirs of bronze-sworded chariot lords from beyond the Ister, who had led their tribes down in past millennia, some driving further to seize the southlands and learn their ways, some taking these mountain kingdoms where they kept old customs on; burying their dead in chamber-tombs alongside their forebears whose skulls were cased in boar-tusk helms and whose hand-bones grasped double axes; handing down, father to son, elaborate niceties of blood-feud and revenge. Affront had been requited, on a man immune from the sword and in any case beneath its dignity; with finesse, in terms cut to his measure. It had been as neat, in its way, as the vengeance in the hall at Aigai.

M. Renault, Fire from Heaven (1969), loc. 1,753

She was dismissive of any notion that people in the past were essentially just like those of the present

She was dismissive of any notion that people in the past were essentially just like those of the present. ‘To pretend so,’ she declared forthrightly, ‘is an evasion and a betrayal, turning our back on them so as to be easy among familiar things.’ It was precisely the contrast between antiquity and the world of her upbringing, which felt as vivid to her as that between an Aegean summer and the drizzle of an English February, which helps to explain her passion for Alexander.

Tom Holland, 'Introduction', M. Renault, Fire from Heaven (1969), loc. 87

Because evil is better organised, better equipped and better paid.

‘You know why the battle of good vs evil is so one-sided, Malin? Because evil is better organised, better equipped and better paid. It is not monsters or yakas or demons we should fear. Organised collectives of evil doers who think they are performing the work of the righteous. That is what should make us shudder.’

S. Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022), loc. 4,694 

Like any gathering of crashing bores talking shop, these suicides are talking about suicide

Like any gathering of crashing bores talking shop, these suicides are talking about suicide. ‘Why is Sri Lanka number one in suicides?’ asks the girl, peering through thick glasses. Are we that much more sadder or violent than the rest of the world?’ ‘Who the fuck cares?’ says the hunched figure, as a lady in pigtails does her high jump over the edge. ‘It’s because we have just the right amount of education to understand that the world is cruel,’ says the schoolgirl. ‘And just enough corruption and inequality to feel powerless against it.’ ‘And we have easy access to weedkiller,’ says the hunchback.

S. Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022), loc. 3,938

Known as the Uncle Nephew Party. In power since the late ’70s and embroiled in the above two wars.

LTTE – The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 

* Want a separate Tamil state. 

* Prepared to slaughter Tamil civilians and moderates to achieve this. 

JVP – The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna 

* Want to overthrow the capitalist state. 

* Are willing to murder the working class while they liberate them. 

UNP – The United National Party 

* Known as the Uncle Nephew Party. 

* In power since the late ’70s and embroiled in the above two wars. 

STF – The Special Task Force 

* On behalf of the Govt, will abduct and torture anyone suspected of being or abetting the LTTE or the JVP.

S. Karunatilaka, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (2022), loc. 348

The horror that was lynching was called life by Black America

White woman in Mississippi claimed that a fourteen-year-old Black boy had said something suggestive to her, and then her husband and brother beat the boy, wrapped barbed wire around his neck, shot him in the head, and threw him over the bridge into the Little Tallahatchie. The image of the boy in his open casket awakened the nation to the horror of lynching. At least the White nation. The horror that was lynching was called life by Black America. The killers, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were acquitted by an all-White jury.

P. Everett, The Trees (2022), loc 954

I don’t give a shit about the blood. It’s the goddamn paperwork

“Goddamnit, I hate murder more than just about anything,” said Sheriff Red Jetty. “It can just ruin a day.” “Because it’s such a waste of life?” the coroner, Reverend Cad Fondle, asked. He had just pronounced Junior Junior and the unidentified Black man dead without so much as touching them. “No, it’s because it’s a mess.” “It is a lot of blood,” Fondle said. “I don’t give a shit about the blood. It’s the goddamn paperwork.” Jetty pointed at the floor. “What you gonna do about Milam’s balls there?”

P. Everett, The Trees (2022), loc.211

How long, really, does a God need to watch shit burn before he intervenes?

Don’t tell me God is watching. Cos all my wretched life he’s been watching; how long, really, does a God need to watch shit burn before he intervenes?

N. Bulawayo, Glory (2022), loc 4,056

Military custom regarding nurses is most irrational

Military custom regarding nurses is most irrational. They are made officers and therefore not permitted to associate with enlisted men. This means that they must find their social life among other officers. But most male officers are married, especially in the medical corps. And most unmarried officers are from social levels into which nurses from small towns do not normally marry. As a result of this involved social system, military nurses frequently have unhappy emotional experiences. Cut off by law from fraternizing with those men who would like to marry them and who would have married them in civilian life, they find their friendships restricted to men who are surprisingly often married or who are social snobs.

J.A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific (1947), loc. 793

Soon as girls arrive exam results go down. Passion leads to a Lower Second

‘I don’t accept presents,’ said Sir, looking briefly at Three Men in a Boat. ‘This is a clean school. No nonsense. But yes, I’ll have this one. Send your sons here when you’ve got some. Present us with a silver cup for something when you’re a filthy rich lawyer, I dare say? Yes. You’ll be a lawyer. Magnificent memory. Sense of logic, no imagination and no brains. My favourite chap, Teddy Feathers, as a matter of fact. I dare say.’ ‘Thank you, Sir. I’ll always keep in touch.’ ‘Don’t go near Wales. And keep off girls for a while. Soon as girls arrive exam results go down. Passion leads to a Lower Second. Goodbye, old Feathers. On with the dance.’

J. Gardam, Old Filth (2004), loc. 1,061

Hitler’s invaded Poland. Don’t tell your father yet, Pat

‘Oh – tea,’ said Mrs Ingoldby. ‘You’re just in time. I’ll get them to make you some more of the little tongue sandwiches. Did you have a good walk?’ ‘Wonderful, thanks. Any news?’ ‘Yes. Hitler’s invaded Poland. Don’t tell your father yet, Pat. He can do nothing about it and there’s his favourite supper. Oxtail stew.’

J. Gardam, Old Filth (2004), loc. 913

When I sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not much care, how it is to end.

This is a long way from saying plausibly that Trollope is to any extent a crime novelist. He did write at least one murder mystery, Phineas Redux, although it's only a murder mystery for the extent of 24 pages in my edition before Trollope the narrator reveals the identity of the killer. "The maintenance of any doubt on that matter, - were it even desirable to maintain a doubt, - would be altogether beyond the power of the present writer," says Trollope, and you can't help feeling he's silently adding "and beneath my dignity".

...

Trollope couldn't abide this sort of thing [detailing clueing in detective novels], as he made clear elsewhere in his Autobiography. 

... When I sit down to write a novel I do not at all know, and I do not much care, how it is to end. Wilkie Collins seems so to construct his that he not only, before writing, plans everything on, down to the minutest detail, from the beginning to the end; but then plots it all back again, to see that there is no piece of necessary dove-tailing that does not dove-tail with absolute accuracy. The construction is most minute and most wonderful. But I can never lose the taste of the construction.

J. Kerridge, ' "Fifteen yards beyond the fourth milestone." Anthony Trollope: crime writer', Trollopiana 130 (2025), 5-6

Wherever men are found, strong liquors are met with, and are used in festivities

Wine, the most pleasant of all drinks, whether due to Noah who planted the vine, or to Bacchus who expressed the juice of the grape, dates back to the infancy of the world. Beer, which is attributed to Osiris, dates to an age far beyond history. All men, even those we call savages, have been so tormented by the passion for strong drinks, that limited as their capacities were, they were yet able to manufacture them. They made the milk of their domestic animals sour: they extracted the juice of many animals and many fruits in which they suspected the idea of fermentation to exist. Wherever men are found, strong liquors are met with, and are used in festivities, sacrifices, marriages, funeral rites, and on all solemn occasions. 

J. Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825), 80

A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye

I'm doing all of Brillat-Savarin's aphorisms together:

• A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye. (p.22)
• Gastronomy rules all life, for the tears of the infant cry for the bosom of the nurse; the dying man receives with some degree of pleasure the last cooling drink, which, alas! he is unable to digest. (36)
• Which one of us, condemned to the fare of the fathers of the desert, would not have smiled at the idea of a well-carved chicken's wing, announcing his rapid rendition to civilized life? (49)
• Give the most hungry man you can meet with the richest possible food, he will eat with difficulty. Give him a glass of wine or of brandy, and at once he will find himself better. (79)
• I observe with pride, that gourmandise and coquettery, the two great modifications which society has effected in our imperious wants, are both of French origin. (87)
• Thousands of men, who, forty years ago would have passed their evenings in cabarets, now pass them at the theatres. Economy, certainly does not gain by this, but morality does. (138)
• Monsieur, said an old marquise to me one day, which do you like best, Burgundy or Bordeaux? Madame, said I, I have such a passion for examining into the matter, that I always postpone the decision a week. (166)
• Take a raisin-- No I thank you; I do not like wine in pills.(167)

J. Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)

Every sixth Jew who died in the Holocaust—altogether close to a million people—came from Ukraine

Every sixth Jew who died in the Holocaust—altogether close to a million people—came from Ukraine. By far the best-known massacre, with the greatest number of victims, took place in Babi Yar (in Ukrainian, Babyn Yar, or Old Woman’s Ravine) on the outskirts of Kyiv. There, in the course of two days, the automatic fire of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, assisted by the German and local police, killed 33,761 Jewish citizens of Kyiv.

S. Plokhy, Gates of Europe (2025), loc. 4,608

None of the groups got what it wanted

The Catholic rebels wanted a Catholic state without Russian interference, while the Orthodox wanted a Cossack state under the jurisdiction of Russia. The Jews wanted to be left alone. None of the groups got what it wanted.

S. Plokhy, Gates of Europe (2025), loc. 2,423, describing the Eighteenth century in Ukraine and the partition of Poland.

Nothing in this kingdom counts so much as how your forefathers behaved on the field at Bosworth

‘I tell you what it is, the loyalty of the Howards.’ Henry limps; he puts out a hand to steady himself against the Lord Privy Seal. ‘John Howard, who was grandfather to the Norfolk that is now, was known to declare that if a stock of wood or a standing stone were King of England, he would defend its title – if it were named so by Parliament.’ ‘It shows a high regard for the standing of Parliament,’ Richard Riche murmurs. ‘But he fought against my father!’ The king turns on Riche. ‘Do you not comprehend that, you dolt? He took Richard Plantagenet for king.’ Riche draws back into himself so far that he seems to be trying to retract into his ribs, like a man squeezed by Skeffington’s Daughter. He begins his apologies, but he – Lord Cromwell – cuts him off. Young men, and Riche is young enough, do not understand that to this very day, nothing in this kingdom counts so much as how your forefathers behaved on the field at Bosworth. 

H. Mantel, The mirror and the light (2020), loc. 5,650

The cardinal, in his days as master of the realm, had spoken of God as if He were a distant policy adviser from whom he heard quarterly

The cardinal, in his days as master of the realm, had spoken of God as if He were a distant policy adviser from whom he heard quarterly: gnomic in his pronouncements, sometimes forgetful, but worth a retainer on account of his experience. At times he sent Him special requests, which the less well-connected call prayers; and always, until the last months of his life, God fell over Himself to make sure Tom Wolsey had what he wanted. But then he prayed, Make me humble; God said, Sir, your request comes too late. His

H. Mantel, The mirror and the light (2020), loc.4,276

But back then we hid, we didn’t even wear our medals. Men wore them, but not women

When I put on a dress for the first time, I flooded myself with tears. I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. We had spent four years in trousers. There was no one I could tell that I had been wounded, that I had a concussion. Try telling it, and who will give you a job then, who will marry you? We were silent as fish. We never acknowledged to anybody that we had been at the front. We just kept in touch among ourselves, wrote letters. It was later that they began to honor us, thirty years later … to invite us to meetings … But back then we hid, we didn’t even wear our medals. Men wore them, but not women. Men were victors, heroes, wooers, the war was theirs, but we were looked at with quite different eyes. Quite different … I’ll tell you, they robbed us of the victory.

S. Alexievich, tr. R. Pevear and L. Volkhonsky, The unwomanly face of war (1985), Kindle loc 2,123

But it’s your inner ear, not your ass, that’s the problem. And your inner ear is a liar

You have to fly by the seat of your pants, they say. Meaning: A real pilot feels the plane’s every movement in his ass. But it’s your inner ear, not your ass, that’s the problem. And your inner ear is a liar. A man, blindfolded and spun slowly in a rotating chair, will think when the chair slows that it has stopped. When it has stopped, he will think it has begun to spin the other way. The mistake happens deep in his ear, among the tiny hair cells and drifting fluid inside the semicircular canals of the bony labyrinth. These are the minute, impossibly fragile internal instruments that detect the yaw, pitch, and roll of the human head—wondrous little gizmos to be sure but poorly evolved for flight.

M. Shipstead, Great Circle (2021), loc. 3,084

Conan is the barbarian hero to end all barbarian heroes; his later imitations seem pallid by comparison

Conan is the barbarian hero to end all barbarian heroes; his later imitations seem pallid by comparison. In “A Witch Shall Be Born,” Conan is captured and crucified. As he hangs on the cross, a vulture flies down to peck his eyes out. Conan bites the vulture’s head off. You just can’t have a hero tougher than that.

L. Sprague deCamp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976), loc. 2,896

For one thing, Morris was not strong on plot. His adventures and encounters “just happen.”

At 65,000 words, this novel is shorter than most of Morris’s fantasies, which is all to the good. It starts off well but tends to peter out. For one thing, Morris was not strong on plot. His adventures and encounters “just happen.” Morris could no doubt have defended himself by saying that he was writing, not a “modern” novel, but a medieval romance of the type of those of Chrestien de Troyes, Gottfried von Strassburg, Lodovico Ariosto, and Sir Thomas Malory. They never worried about intricate, logical, self-consistent plots either.

L. Sprague deCamp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976), loc. 925

They were not about to sit down and master the techniques of dry farming when murder and robbery were so much more fu

A reason for the ferocity of Howard’s barbarians is that the barbarians he knew the most about, the Comanche Indians of Texas, were one of the most warlike peoples on earth. Having just been promoted from food-gathering savagery by acquiring horses, they were not about to sit down and master the techniques of dry farming when murder and robbery were so much more fun.

L. Sprague deCamp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976), loc. 672

Those who fancy that they would relish life in a bygone era assume that they would arrive in the earlier milieu with all the health, wealth, and social status needed to enjoy their visit

Needless to say, those who fancy that they would relish life in a bygone era assume that they would arrive in the earlier milieu with all the health, wealth, and social status needed to enjoy their visit. Nobody would wish to find himself an Irish peasant during the Famine of the 1840s, or a medieval serf, or a slave in the Athenian silver mines at Laureion. Actually, if one were translated to the body of such a dweller in former times, chosen at random, one would be hundreds of times more likely to find oneself a downtrodden proletarian than a baron or an Athenian eupatrid, because the affluent in those days were such a tiny fraction of the whole. For that matter, such a translation would drastically cut one’s life expectancy, because there were so many illnesses and injuries that in those days were fatal.

L. Sprague deCamp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976), loc. 485

House numbers exist not to help you find your way, but rather to help the government find you

"The great enterprise of numbering the houses,” Tantner writes, “is characteristic of the eighteenth century. Without any trace of irony, the house number can be considered one of the most important innovations of the Age of Enlightenment, of that century obsessed, as it was, with order and classification.” House numbers were not invented to help you navigate the city or receive your mail, though they perform these two functions admirably. Instead, they were designed to make you easier to tax, imprison, and police. House numbers exist not to help you find your way, but rather to help the government find you.

D. Mask, The address book (2020), 91

Addresses were helping to empower the people who lived there by helping them to feel a part of society

And inclusion is one of the secret weapons of street addresses. Employees at the World Bank soon found that addresses were helping to empower the people who lived there by helping them to feel a part of society. This is particularly true in slum areas. “A citizen is not an anonymous entity lost in the urban jungle and known only by his relatives and co-workers; he has an established identity,” a group of experts wrote in a book on street addressing. Citizens should have a way to “reach and be reached by associations and government agencies,” and to be reached by fellow citizens, even ones they didn’t know before. In other words, without an address, you are limited to communicating only with people who know you. And it’s often people who don’t know you who can most help you.

D. Mask, The address book (2020), 30

It is so tightly packed, so indistinguishable, so angular, that it makes your brain have a fight with your eyes

No one reads full Gothic script for a visual treat. It is so tightly packed, so indistinguishable, so angular, that it makes your brain have a fight with your eyes. It might look neatly ordered and crisp from a distance, bur once you start trying to read the actual words, it stops being pleasant… Scribes were well aware of how ridiculous this tightly compressed Gothic text looked, and they had a mock sentence that was mainly composed of the letters m, n, u and i [where the letters all run into each other so it is impossible to tell which is which]

S. Charles, The medieval scriptorium (2024), 281,283

May they be rotated on the breaking wheel and hanged. Amen

A book of the abbey of SS Mary and Nicholas of Arnstein. If anyone steals it: may they die the death, may they be roasted in a frying pan, may the falling sickness and fever attack them, and may they be rotated on the breaking wheel and hanged. Amen

Warning in a German bible, cited in S. Charles, The medieval scriptorium (2024), 151

Language is the ordinary medium of daily communication – unlike music or paint

Prose is always simple in this sense, because language is the ordinary medium of daily communication – unlike music or paint. Our ordinary possessions are being borrowed by even very difficult writers: the millionaires of style – difficult lavish stylists like Sir Thomas Browne, Melville, Ruskin, Lawrence, James, Woolf – are very prosperous, but they use the same banknotes as everyone else

J. Wood, How fiction works (10th Anniversary edition. 2019), 157-8

They have not read enough literature to be taught by it how to read it

You only have to teach literature to realise that most young readers are poor noticers. I know from my own old books, wantonly annotated twenty years ago when I was a student, that I routinely underlined for approval details and images and metaphors that strike me now as commonplace, while serenely missing things which now seem wonderful. We grow as readers, and twenty-year-olds are relative virgins. They have not read enough literature to be taught by it how to read it.

J. Wood, How fiction works (10th Anniversary edition. 2019), 62